Transit Funding Solutions, Parisian Edition

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic
suggests looking across the Atlantic for some answers to that question,
taking New York’s MTA and Paris’s RATP as examples of the differing
approaches in the U.S. and in Europe. His detailed analysis of the
funding of the Parisian transit authority, which relies in large part
on payroll taxes and to a much greater extent than the MTA on
government subsidies, leads him to a couple of conclusions, among them:

So, on the surface level, [the Parisian transit
authority] appears to be funded much like the MTA,
with funds coming from dedicated taxes and from government subsidies.
There are two important differences, however: one, revenue from the
taxes that pay for transportation in Paris are less likely to vary
significantly during economic downturns; two, the government subsidies
are designed to compensate when tax revenue falls short.

MTA’s reliance on sales and real estate transfer taxes puts it at a
great risk of losing expected funds, because consumption of consumer
products (sales tax) and of property (urban tax) decreases dramatically
during recessions; so do the balance sheets of corporations, which the
MTA also taxes. On the other hand, taxes on income do not see changes
that are nearly as significant, especially in France, where firing
people is incredibly difficult.